from the necessity-is-the-mother... dept

A little over a year ago, I asked how long it would be until we had a full, professional quality feature film filmed entirely with smartphones. This one doesn't completely qualify, but it is quite interesting. Ross Pruden points our attention to the story of This Is Not A Film, the documentary from widely respected Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi. The story behind this film is pretty crazy. Basically, Panahi was arrested and given a six-year sentence in prison, while also being barred from making films for 20 years. While he appealed the sentence, he was apparently able to remain in his Tehran apartment under house arrest... and decided to document his life as he dealt with this situation by filming it, often using iPhones to capture scenes (though not entirely). The film has been shown at various film festivals, but is hitting US theaters starting February 29th, and the trailer recently came out:

Apparently the film itself was smuggled out of Iran to Cannes by putting it on a USB key, and then baking that USB key into a cake that was shipped out of the country. In all the news coverage of this film, I haven't seen anything about how the Iranian government reacted to this film, which they must know about by now.

Either way, there's something of a statement being made here about the power of smartphone cameras these days. It really was just a few years ago that the idea of mixing cameras with phones was widely panned as a dumb idea. And now they're helping internationally renowned filmmakers who are being censored and persecuted to keep making their art. It also says something about the need for some creators to keep making their art, no matter what the challenges to doing so. That's really amazing.

Also, it starts to lead you down the path to rethinking questions about censorship and free speech limitations. Obviously, banning someone from making a film is a form of censorship and an infringement on free speech rights. And, of course, Iran does not have a particularly good reputation on free speech issues. But technology changes things. When "making a film" is as easy as clicking a button on the phone you carry at all times, it changes the equation. "Making a film" is no longer "making a film." It's just something you and anyone else can do at any time. When that happens, the very concept of banning someone from making a film... just seems silly.

from the big-brother-is-txting-you dept

Mobile phone service and things like texting are pretty popular in Iran, and we've seen how Iranian officials have struggled to deal with that in the past. For example, one politician threatened revenge against anyone who sent negative text messages about him, and the government has also announced that it will filter out text messages it deems inappropriate or immoral. But rather than just trying to block or condemn the technology, it looks like officials are now looking to use it to warn against dissent as well. On The Media points us to the news that the government has been sending text messages to mobile phone subscribers it believes are planning to take part in protests, marking the one year anniversary of last June's election protests, warning them not to take part:

The message, which has the Ministry's emergency phone number, 113, reads, "Dear citizen, according to received information, you have been influenced by the destabilising propaganda which the media affiliated with foreign countries have been disseminating. In case of any illegal action and contact with the foreign media, you will be charged as a criminal consistent with the Islamic Punishment Act and dealt with by the Judiciary".

You may remember, last year, many people credited text messaging and services like Twitter for helping to get the news out about what was actually happening during the protests. This bit of news is a reminder that two can play at that game, and governments can often use the same technology to try to stifle dissent. This isn't a condemnation of the technology, of course, but just a reminder that the technology can be used for a variety of different purposes.